You know what happened back in March? We were all cocooned in our homes. Some of us have managed to escape the house, but others haven’t left their rooms since. Inevitably, being sealed away from the outside world can and will lead to mental health issues. Many of us have experienced such issues to some capacity, myself included.

There were some ways that we escaped the problem that was our internal dialogue. It happened through social media, through music, through games, through family. Whichever way you slice it, quarantine was (and still is) an excellent time to seek solace in the world of media. 

Of course, there are the usual associated risks with seeking solace in media that we’ve all listened to since the dawn of time. I’m not here to drone on about those risks. I’m here to say to everyone: good job. I don’t care what color of skin you have, where you were born, what accent you have, or what language you speak. I’m here to tell you that you’ve done a good job in simply living. Simply surviving.

Perseverance can be a particularly difficult trait to retain in these times, especially since we’re all getting back into the rhythm of school right now. Believe it or not, though, everyone has the most necessary element of perseverance right now. We can fight against the dangers. We will last longer than the dangers. That’s what humans are meant to do, after all.

But enough philosophical rambling. I know that some of you might start losing the most necessary element of perseverance – the desire to live – in the future. Life is hard, after all. If it wasn’t, we’d all have robotic servants serving us glasses of our choice of beverage on our own yachts for all eternity. 

I’m not going to say that you should just get over it. I’m not going to say that you should just stop being depressed or suicidal. I’m not going to say that you shouldn’t be depressed because you have what others do not. I’m telling you right here, right now: you are allowed to be depressed. You are allowed to bemoan your circumstances. It might come from your genes, or it might come from your life’s experiences. In either case, you can survive. You are allowed to survive despite the hand you’ve been dealt. 

I don’t care about what you believe in. You can believe in Christ or Buddha or whoever you want to believe in. That is your choice. You can even believe in nobody at all. That’s fine. You may believe that fate has chosen to lead us all to death simply for the sake of a game. I don’t care about that. I’m telling you that you can make the effort to survive, to fight for your life. It will be hard, even impossible at times. But you can survive. 

This is a rather long-winded way of saying that you can keep going. Reality may not be the thing we all thought it was at one point. That’s just life. We’ll continue to live however we choose. Is it the right path? I don’t know. I’m rather certain that most of you don’t know, either. Keep going, though. Choose the easy path or the hard path or maybe even the impossible path. You’re allowed to make that choice for yourself.